Chapter 40 — Skin Deep

Days later Rína and her aunt found themselves looking down upon a small colosseum of glass. Arrayed within were numerous monsters, all surrounding Rína’s noble champion. Though admittedly Rína’s little champion was really more like a helpless civilian caught in over their head, with their only hope of survival being Rína’s acts of divine intervention.

The inadvertent gladiator—named… Mealla, Rína decided—seemed unaware of the danger they were in as they shuffled around the middle of the arena, and it wasn’t long before one of the monsters caught their scent. The monster in question was a sickly lime green and it lunged at Mealla without hesitation. Mealla would normally have died then and there, but with a wave of her hand, Rína turned the colosseum into a caustic hellscape. The surface of Mealla’s body burned, but the damage was nothing compared to the monster. It aborted its lunge as it began to writhe, pulling its body in on itself, trying to reduce its surface area, but Rína knew that it was already dead.

The green monster died in truth a second later, but little Mealla was far from safe. The acid permeating the arena stirred the rest of the monsters into a blind frenzy and it wasn’t long before one blindly charged onto a collision course with Mealla — but seconds before impact, the world changed once more.

In a moment the acidic miasma was replaced with a sickly sweet aroma. The aroma did not stop the dark blue monster’s charge entirely, but the beast as a whole became far more lethargic, almost comatose. As for Mealla, the tonic had the opposite effect, causing the little gladiator’s metabolism to spike. The effect was so extreme that when the monster eventually collided with Mealla, Rína almost pitied the thing as her now rabid gladiator tore it apart.

The next pair of monsters were a marbled red and an off-yellow, and Rína knew from previous attempts that they were eerily well coordinated for how simplistic the creatures were. They were essentially packmates, and so similar to Mealla that there was little Rína could do to either that wouldn’t also kill her gladiator.

The two had already picked up Mealla’s scent and the only way Rína could see Mealla surviving was if the two monsters somehow turned on each other… which was exactly what happened.

A thick fog poured into the colosseum. It was ostensibly harmless to all that it touched, however on contact with the marbled red monster, the fog turned a fruity pink that may as well have been a dinner bell to its packmate. The off-yellow monster immediately changed course, pouncing on its ally and starting a fight Rína knew neither would survive.

And then all that was left was the final monster. It was enormous, several times larger than any of its fellows, with a bright, almost metallic purple sheen to its body. It had been slowly lumbering towards Mealla since the very beginning of the encounter and while it was still some ways off, Rína knew that its arrival would be a death sentence.

Rína took a deep breath, hoping that this attempt would be the one as she poured yet another prepared vial into the colosseum of glass. The solution did nothing to the purple monstrosity, instead causing silica deposits to form across Mealla’s surface.

From an outside perspective, it looked like the gladiator had been killed by way of crystalline petrification, and while the silica shell was indeed slowly choking Mealla and would eventually kill them, in the short term it was some very necessary armor for what was to come.

Rína waited for the shell to reach a certain thickness…

…and then set the world on fire.

The colosseum turned into an inferno as the mountain of metallic purple boiled alive. Mealla remained safely ensconced as Rína enjoyed the pyrotechnic display while deliberately trying to not think about a certain snowy night.

For better and worse, the fire was brief, both it and the monster dying a few seconds later.

Rína reached for her final vial that would safely break down Mealla’s armor, but frowned as she watched the armor dissolving all on its own. Rína’s eyes widened as she realized what was happening but it was already too late. She watched helplessly as first Mealla’s armor and then Mealla themselves succumbed to whatever acid must have formed.

And it wasn’t just Mealla that was affected. The blue monster was already gone and the rest of the creatures soon followed suit. Even the interior of the glass colosseum began to dissolve—or rather the ‘petri dish’ as Yvette called it.

“Gods damn it,” Rína cursed from the other side of the wagon’s fume hood, looking down on yet another dish where Mealla the slime mold fell in battle.

“That was much closer than your previous attempts,” Yvette consoled.

“Yeah, but I really thought this one would do it.”

“So what do you believe went wrong?” Yvette asked.

Rína chewed her lip as she thought it over, “Obviously some kind of acid formed at the last second there, but I have no idea what kind.”

Yvette raised the fume hood and began inspecting what was left of her charred and partially dissolved glassware, “Well the fact that it could dissolve the dish should tell you everything you need to know, especially with it having come up in our lessons before.”

“Are you talking about… «hydrofluoric acid?»” Rína asked and received a nod from her aunt, «But where would the fluorine be coming from?»

«You tell me.» Yvette wrote as she pressed countless diagrams against Rína’s aura.

They were the same diagrams Rína had seen before, depicting the cellular structures and compositions of the various slime molds—that is to say, Mealla and the color coded ‘monsters’.

It was an almost overwhelming amount of information even though Yvette had heavily modified the slime molds to be as simple as possible. Still, it took Rína a while of skimming before she found what she was looking for: a weirdly high concentration of fluorine tied up in an organelle Yvette had labeled as being critical to the blue mold’s metabolism.

That alone didn’t solve the mystery of course as it didn’t explain how the fluorine got released to then form the acid. So Rína could only crack her knuckles, pull out her notebook, and add to the growing number of pages filled top to bottom with scratch work. She went through all the likely reaction chains, hunting for whatever might have created the acid. It would have normally been a large amount of work, but thankfully her aunt was looking over her shoulder, asking a few leading questions here and there, thus it wasn’t long before Rína had her answer.

«So… the silica compound must have seeped into the blue’s organelle after Mealla had broken open the cell membranes. And the organelle itself had already been doped with the sedative, so when heat was added, the organelle—what? Acted like a cauldron and produced the acid?» Rína asked.

«As well as a plethora of other products.» Yvette confirmed, «And it did not create much hydrofluoric acid, but even at small concentrations it is incredibly corrosive. Thankfully it requires a fair amount of heat to actually form.»

Rína frowned, «How is the heat requirement a good thing?»

Yvette raised an eyebrow, «Because a less exothermic solution would prevent the acid from forming?»

«And just like that you’ve lost me.» Rína wrote, trying and failing to suppress a smirk.

Yvette snorted and shook her head, «If the flashy finisher is to stay then how might you mitigate the acid?»

Rína allowed herself a cheeky grin before giving the problem her full attention, “Well neutralizing it with a base is the obvious answer,” she mumbled halfway to herself, «but it’s not like they’d perfectly mix the instant I poured it in, and a strong enough base would do a lot of damage on its own… I could use something other than a sedative against the blue mold, but the acid might still form down one of the other reaction chains… Maybe I could try to just seal it up? Keep the fluorine away from everything else?»

Rína looked again at the diagram for the cell membrane of the blue slime mold. Unfortunately it was a lot less reactive than the Mealla mold’s so Rína doubted she could replicate the same kind of silica shell trick. Although she didn’t actually need to seal up all the cell membranes, just the fluorine rich organelles, and because they were also crucial to the mold’s metabolism, doing so should kill it pretty fast.

With that in mind, Rína looked over the organelle again, searching for something she could exploit. Like the rest of the cellular structures and the slimes as a whole, it was apparently far simpler than anything Rína would ever find in nature. The simple fact of the matter was that the scenario Rína was presented with was a constructed one—a purely artificial, biochemical puzzle box that her aunt had designed to be solved in any number of ways. As such it wasn’t long before Rína found a certain protein chain laced across the organelle’s surface that she figured she could make use of.

«What if I used this bit,» Rína pulsed her aura against the respective spot on her aunt’s diagram, «as an anchor point for… I’m not sure yet, but definitely some kind of shell or sealant.»

Yvette considered for a moment, «That is certainly workable, but anything like that would need to first get past the cell membrane,» writing this, Yvette shifted the diagram she was rendering to be focused on the spot in question, «Your largest hurdle will likely be in getting past the intramembrane pumps.»

Rína chewed her lip as her attention fell on the structures. The pumps in question were gigantic, hideously complex molecules embedded across each cell’s membrane that acted as gatekeepers for what compounds were to be either pulled in or shunted out of the cell.

Rína had been mostly avoiding them and cell interiors in general just because of the complexity involved. She instead focused on the cell membranes which were just spherical tilings of relatively simple molecules, but trying to bypass the pumps wasn’t necessarily out of the question.

In fact, Rína had technically already done so with the sedative she had designed. It had involved a lot of trial and error, but the end result was just a slight variation on the specific sugar molecule that the blue slime’s cells ate. It was similar enough that the pumps drew it in, but different enough that the cells couldn’t properly digest it, leaving the sedative to clog up the slime’s metabolism, thus, well, sedating it.

Maybe she could use a similar trick to smuggle something else in? Like, if she wanted to get a polymer—a long chain-like molecule—into the blue slime’s cells, maybe she could make the ends of the polymer look like the sugars the cells ate, then with a bit of luck the pumps would slurp down the entire chain like a spaghetti noodle. Of course the polymers would probably just get stuck in the pumps mid slurp, but… was that a better outcome?

Rína grumbled to herself as she mulled over ideas, her notebook’s pages becoming more ink than paper as half-formed designs flowed out of her pen. It became quickly apparent that the complexity of what she was trying to do was of the exponential variety, also known as the leave-and-come-back-with-an-army-of-chemists kind, and most of the designs she jotted down were quickly scribbled out for being unworkable. Still, she wasn’t deterred, though—

A knock came from the wagon’s door.

“I believe that is for you,” Yvette said, her eyes slightly unfocused.

Rína looked up, begrudgingly setting down her notebook to answer the door. Opening it she saw Theo standing there on the street. He wore an everyday shirt and trousers that no one would look twice at, as opposed to his usual uniform. But despite his casual dress he had a kind of nervous tension to his body language as his eyes darted up and down the street.

“Hey Theo, what’s up? I thought we weren’t hanging out till the afternoon?” Rína asked.

“Hm?” Theo said, his attention snapping front and center, “Uh yeah, no. I mean, yeah, we’re still on for today, but, uh, I was actually wondering if you could help me out as a… customer.”

Rína frowned, “Uh, sure. We’re usually only open for breakfast but I guess we could make you an early lunch or—”

“I’m not here for lunch… although that does sound good…” Theo shook his head, refocusing, “No, I was wondering if I could be a customer of your other profession, the one you mentioned before.”

Rína’s frown deepened, “Wait, are you talking about us being traveling he—”

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“Yeah!” Theo shouted, cutting her off before lowering his voice, “Yeah, that one, and with a side of discretion, you know?”

“Oh, uh,” Rína looked back into the wagon, to her aunt. Yvette had clearly heard the exchange, and after a moment she gave a hesitant nod of approval, “Sure, come on in.”

Theo breathed out a sigh of relief as Rína led him into the wagon. Yvette had cleaned up the fume hood from Rína’s previous attempt, but there was still enough glassware out and about to elicit a low whistle from Theo.

“Hells of a setup you guys got. I sort of assumed it’d just be one big kitchen in here.”

“On the contrary: that is exactly what it is. And I can only assume you have never heard of alembic-fried-salmon?” Yvette asked dryly.

“No, I can’t say that I have, but it sounds amazing,” Theo said, meeting Yvette’s gaze with a brilliant smile, “Hi, I’m Theo; you must be Rína’s aunt, Yvette.”

“The very same.” Yvette replied, “Now how may we help you?”

“Right… uh,” Theo’s smile faded as he looked between the two women.

“Dude, it’s fine,” Rína said, motioning to a chair at the wagon’s miniature dining table, “Just sit down, and tell us what’s wrong.”

Theo nodded hesitantly as he took the seat, “It… well, this is the problem.”

From the moment Rína had answered the door, Theo had kept both of his hands in his pockets. Rína hadn’t thought anything of it, but as he took his hands out, she didn’t miss the obvious tremble going through his fingers.

“It started up yesterday, and yeah, I know it’ll probably go away on its own but it’s just that I have a…” Theo again glanced between Rína and Yvette, “...private theater performance scheduled for tonight. And you know, the thing about us actors is that our, uh, patrons only ever see us as either pinnacles of health and vitality or literal plague rats with no middle ground in between. Speaking of which, if we could keep this between the three of us, that’d be fantastic.”

Rína shared a look with her aunt, neither woman needing to write out their thoughts with aura.

“Yes, I believe mutual discretion can certainly be arranged.” Yvette began, “And Rína has previously mentioned your profession in passing so there is no need for obfuscation.”

“Really?” Theo said, looking surprised.

“Shit, sorry, was I not supposed to or…” Rína started.

“What, no,” Theo waved her off, turning to address Yvette, “But you don’t have a problem with that?”

Yvette gave him a look of genuine confusion, “Why would I take issue with your profession?”

“Oh, uh, nevermind,” Theo said.

“Returning to the issue at hand, or rather, at your hands,” Yvette said in a deadpan as she took Theo’s hands in hers and began inspecting them, “Have you been experiencing any other symptoms, perhaps over the last few weeks?”

“I don’t think so?” Theo said, keeping still as Yvette went on to feel his pulse, open his eyelids wide, check his breathing, as well as the rest of the usual faux medical examination.

“What about any feelings of dull pain? Perhaps a minor decrease in balance?” Yvette pressed.

“Well, I mean…” Theo trailed off uncertainly.

“What of your eyesight? Have you noticed any degradation in visual acuity during the same time frame, even if only slightly?”

Theo frowned, “Now that you mention it, I guess maybe ‘yes’ to all that. But not a lot, I assumed it was just a preview of my thirties. Wait, so you know what’s wrong?”

“Perhaps. Do we, Rína?” Yvette prompted.

Rína chewed her lip as she considered the symptoms. Besides the hand tremors, the symptoms would probably be nothing, but since her aunt was grouping them together, they were obviously connected.

“It sounds like it might be the early stages of some kind of toxin that affects your… senses «nervous system»,” Rína half wrote and half spoke for Theo’s sake, “Maybe heavy metal poisoning?”

Yvette nodded, “It is quicksilver poisoning, specifically.”

Theo blinked hard, “I’m sorry, somebody poisoned me? And with metal? I thought only, like, weird flowers and snakes were poisonous.”

“The attribution of malice is as of yet unfounded, but yes, I am certain that is what is causing your current symptoms — which will only get worse over time. The metal was likely absorbed through the skin and may have very well been a matter of environmental exposure, though I admit I cannot think of a possible source. Did you make any significant changes to your daily routine, perhaps one or two months ago?”

“What, no, not really,” Theo said as panic began to creep into his voice.

“Then what is your daily routine, if you do not mind me asking?” Yvette continued.

In a halfway frantic tone, Theo began detailing exactly that, though there weren’t any surprises to be found. His day sounded a lot like anyone else’s: wake up, go to work, do some errands, meet with friends for drinks. Because he worked nights, the exact order of things moved around, but the same could be said about a decent fraction of the city’s workforce.

After going through his day once, Yvette’s facial expressions showed that she didn’t hear anything out of place, so Theo began going into more detail with more desperation. He went so far as to talk about the frequency of his clients — regulars and otherwise — though never by name and never with any of the gory details.

Rína only listened with half an ear because she was fixated on a single fact that only then properly registered: someone poisoned her friend.

Her aunt seemed to be of the ‘let’s not jump to conclusions’ mindset, but Rína knew damn well that there weren’t just puddles of mercury lying around. There was no way someone was specifically targeting Theo — if they were, he’d already be dead, and by some other poison — but for enough mercury to get into his system over the course of weeks, someone had to knowingly choose for that to happen.

The only kinds of people that used mercury at all were apothecaries and maybe a couple smiths, all of whom would know damn well how toxic mercury was. There was absolutely no accident, no unforeseen consequence, and certainly no excuse for her friend getting poisoned. Someone somewhere was presented with a choice and decided that Theo’s health, hells, even his very life, didn’t matter for shit and it was totally fine if he just—

“Rína?” Came her aunt’s voice, snapping her back to reality.

Only then did Rína realize just how much her vision had narrowed and her heart was pounding.

“Sorry, uh…” Rína shook her head, forcing herself to focus on the problem. Assuming the mercury was coming from an apothecary — who deserved to have their house burned down with them trapped inside — then it would be from one of their products that Theo was a regular user of. And as her aunt said, the stuff was getting absorbed through his skin, which really just narrowed it down to one or two options.

“What about your makeup?” Rína asked Theo, “Or maybe your skin cream.”

Theo’s panic had been visibly rising, but in that instant all of it was replaced with a righteous indignation.

“Excuse me, Rína,” he said, seeming insulted more than anything, “But this,” he framed his genuinely beautiful face with his still shaking fingers, “Is all natural.”

Rína simply replied by shooting him an impatient scowl.

“Alright,” he relented, “maybe I use a little product, but only on my face, and only every now and then.”

That wouldn’t account for the toxicity levels, so Rína’s gaze only hardened.

“Fine. Maybe I use more than a little, in a variety of places, especially when I’m getting ready for work. Happy?”

“No Theo, I am not fucking happy,” Rína snapped, “Someone is poisoning my friend, and presumably hells of a lot of other people. Your symptoms are probably worse than other people’s because of how much you use whatever it is, but Theo, this shit can be lethal. In a few months at the current rate, you’ll be dead.”

“Oh…” Theo deflated into his seat, “Fuck…”

The wagon was silent for a long second before Yvette cleared her throat.

“There are treatments for quicksilver poisoning, of course «which I have been performing since I found the mercury», so you need not worry for your health.” Yvette assured before looking to Rína, “But what medicine would be effective towards this end?”

“Really? Right now?” Rína challenged, too pissed off for a quiz.

“Yes. Right now.” Yvette insisted.

Another protest was on Rína’s tongue but she swallowed it at the last second, instead huffing and giving the question some thought, “A, uh, detoxing tonic «chelator solution» that you mentioned before should work, right?”

“Quite right,” Yvette said, “Though beyond medicines, removing oneself from the source of a toxin should be the first treatment. On that note, I admit that I am skeptical of your theory Rína. After all, why in the name of all the gods would someone put quicksilver in cosmetics?”

Rína shrugged, “It’s cheaper than the shit that won’t kill you. Say, Theo, in the last month or two have any of the formulas for the stuff you use changed? Like, you know, has anything felt a little different, maybe denser, or maybe it doesn’t spread quite the same way, something like that?”

Theo frowned, “Yeah… now that you mention it. The skin cream I use did start feeling a little different around that time, but it still works fine…”

“Did you put any of it on today?” Rína asked.

“A little on my nose and cheeks, just for walking around town, you know.”

A second later Yvette made a small noise of surprise, “Well I—”

Rína cleared her throat, interrupting her aunt.

“—will of course have to confirm this.” Yvette said, looking around the wagon for a prop to use.

Rína however had already grabbed a hand towel, “Hold still, this’ll just take a sec,” she said as she wiped the corner of the towel across Theo’s cheek. She then took a pair of shears and cut off the corner, dropping the bit of fabric into a glass vial. Next into the vial she poured two clear reactant solutions and gave the whole thing a shake.

In a moment, the liquid in which the fabric was steeped turned a bright blue — not because of any mercury present but because of the large amount of copper precipitate the two solutions reacted to produce.

“It would seem that Rína was correct,” Yvette said, leveling a serious gaze at the blue liquid, “The product you use is highly toxic, with far more quicksilver added to it than could ever have been an accident.” Yvette handed Theo what was left of the hand towel, “I would recommend washing it off and finding a different supplier.”

Theo gulped, and without a word took the towel and rushed over to the wash basin, the wagon soon filled with the sounds of rough scrubbing.

“You know,” Theo began, “that might actually be a little difficult.”

“Oh? You seem to be doing an adequate job removing the topmost layers of your skin.” Yvette commented.

“Heh, no, I’m talking about the shopping,” Theo said between the towel doing laps around his face, “The place I buy from is owned by the Doukas family; they’ve basically got a monopoly on beauty products in this part of the city, as well as about a dozen other things.”

“Well shit, then it might be more than a single store that’s doing this,” Rína said, “So… what’s the plan?”

“The plan?” Yvette asked.

“Yeah, the plan,” Rína reiterated, “Someone’s out there poisoning people en masse: what are we gonna do?”

Yvette shook her head, “Nothing at all.”

Rína recoiled as if slapped, “I’m sorry, what?”

“The responsibility to solve each of a society’s ills is not ours, nor has it ever been.” Yvette stated matter-of-factly, “We can discuss what we might do for those afflicted, but vigilante justice is not our domain. We are, after all, in a city and there are authorities whom we may simply notify.”

“Uh, that might not work out how you think…” Theo said to Yvette, “The Doukas family are the authorities in this part of the city. And whenever someone has tried to call them out for some shady shit, well… it usually didn’t end too well for them.”

“I see…”

“Exactly, so what are we gonna do?” Rína insisted.

Yvette sighed, “If the policy of the powers that be is that profit should take precedence over public health, then nothing short of a revolution will meaningfully change anything. Even if this line of cosmetics were rectified and appropriate punishment doled out to the parties responsible, it would just be replaced by a different revenue stream, likely at the expense of another group of people.

“Please, do not think that I speak without personal experience on this matter,” Yvette continued, almost pleading, “The best use of our efforts is in helping those afflicted, assuming we can do so without drawing too much attention.”

“I—Wh—It—” Rína tried as she stared dumbstruck at her aunt, “Aunty, they poisoned Theo. I don’t care if it was just a single apothecary assistant cutting costs or half the damn aristocrats — they don’t get to walk away as if nothing happened. Even if I—”

“Rína.” Yvette barked her name like an order, her tone instantly cold, “I have seen their kind before: action taken against even a subsidiary will be viewed as an assault against the whole. And seeing as we are merely unnoteworthy travelers selling meals out of a wagon, we will not be picking a fight with a civic dynasty; do I make myself clear?”

“I—” Rína froze. She had never heard her aunt speak like this, and with the ancient witch’s eyes boring into her, it took Rína a long moment to find her voice again, “…yeah… clear,” she eventually managed with a nod.

Yvette slowly released a breath Rína hadn’t realized her aunt had been holding.

“Thank you,” Yvette said in a whisper.

And that whisper was what set Rína’s stomach churning. Maybe it was the hint of desperation that Rína heard in it, maybe it was the slow realization that Yvette’s aversion towards action was for Rína’s sake and not because of any apathy, or maybe it was just the sudden whiplash of her aunt going from severe to vulnerable. It could have been a lot of things, but the most likely culprit was the fact that Rína had just lied to her aunt’s face.